Police: TA car bombing most likely a 'work accident'

Explosion that injured two brothers in south Tel Aviv likely not an attempted mob hit as police originally suspected.

Tel Aviv car bomb 390.
(photo credit:BEN HARTMAN)

A car bombing that injured two brothers in south Tel Aviv on Saturday night was
most likely a “work accident,” and not an attempted underworld hit on the two
brothers, Tel Aviv police said on Monday.

Though the Yiftach
sub-district’s investigation of the bombing on Ben-Tzvi Street is still not
complete, an official with the Tel Aviv district said Monday that as the
investigation continues, there is increasing reason to believe that the bomb was
put in the car by brothers Shaul and Yaniv Peretz before the explosion, and they
were taking it to a different location to use in a hit on a rival.

On
Sunday night, police arrested a friend of the brothers who witnesses said was in
the car moments before it exploded. The witnesses said the third man got out of
the car with the brothers when they stopped at a kiosk on Ben-Tzvi, but stayed
behind in the store while the brothers returned to the car. The vehicle exploded
while the man was inside the store, and he then fled the scene on
foot.

Though they believe the bombing was most likely accidental, police
are also weighing the possibility that the friend planted the bomb in the car
and stayed behind in the kiosk while he telephoned someone else to detonate the
explosives.

Shaul, 27, was moderately wounded and Yaniv, 30, was lightly
hurt in the explosion, which turned their car into a charred wreck and sent
chunks of the vehicle flying dozens of meters in every direction – including a
large chunk of the windshield that landed nearly a block away in an
alleyway.

The bombing took place almost exactly a month since mobster
Nissim Alperon narrowly escaped death as his sedan exploded in an attempted hit
on Menachem Begin Street in Tel Aviv on January 10. The explosion, which injured
seven passersby, was the eighth attempt on Alperon’s life in the past 12 years.